ABSTRACT
It would not surprise many people if the Collected Papers on Technique of an analyst who started practising in the days before established training might have little interest today, in an age of increasing professionalisation and state legitimation. For those contemporary clinicians for whom the invention of new conceptual nomenclature spells more than the history of the field, such a volume might simply seem to indicate developmental positions that have long been superseded. That such is not the case stems not only from the significance of the transformation of practice and the new lines of theoretical articulations that these papers opened, but also from the clearsighted way in which they raise controversial issues and problematics that are by no means stilled. All the less reason, then, to be assured that one can skip over these papers in the belief that what is of value in them has already been assimilated and augmented in subsequent work by others. The controversies that still surround Michael Fordham’s writings on technique attest to their significance. What makes them essential reading, irrespective of whether one agrees with their conclusions-and anyone who knows him will be familiar with the way he continually questions and reworks his previous conclusions-is that they have staked out inescapable markers in this field.
